This is What Love Feels Like
by quinnovative
Summary: Lena's buried in too much work for movie night and calls Kara to say she can't make it. But Kara can hear the stress in Lena's voice and she waits a few more hours until eventually going to visit Lena at L-Corp, with Maggie and Alex right at her side. (Supercorp and Sanvers / A companion piece to Best Days and all the other ones in that universe)


**A/N:** Hope you enjoy this fluffy piece that I couldn't get out of my head. :) It takes place in the same universe as my other Lena-centric fics, in which Lena knows Kara is Supergirl and Lena's a part of the super friends.

If you read By Your Side, I just want to let you know that I'm working on the next update and should have it out within a few days.

* * *

The moment Lena begins to speak, Kara knows something is wrong, and it shows on the blonde's face in the falling of her smile and scrunching of her brows.

Alex pauses the movie and Maggie sits up, eases herself off of Alex's side as they watch Kara with parallel concern.

"Kara, I can't make it to movie night."

"Okay," Kara says, voice steady and soothing, because Lena's words are rushed and the usual poised and cool timbre is replaced with a heightened pitch and Kara doesn't need her super powers to hear the quickening hiccups of breath. They carry through the line and both Maggie and Alex sit up a little further.

"I'm sorry, I really wanted to come. I just—"

"Okay, hey hey it's okay," Kara uncurls the leg from beneath her and stands from the couch. "No big deal, don't even worry about it."

"Okay." There's a tightening in her voice, a ghost of a whimper as Lena bites hard on her lip.

"How are you? Meeting didn't go well?"

Lena shakes her head and when she finally manages a no it's watery, and Maggie can barely hear it as Kara moves.

"I'm sorry," Kara says, walking slow circles around the kitchen in dim yellow light. "I know it was important to you, and that it means you've got a lot on your plate now."

There's a moment of silence where Alex and Maggie can't hear Lena's responses anymore and the apartment is full of Kara's soft pacing footsteps.

"Yeah of course. I'll see you later, if you need anything just call."

Another beat of quiet. Five more footsteps.

"Lena, I'm always going to wait up for you. I'll have a fuzzy blanket and your favorite pajamas waiting with some dinner, I can hear how tired you are."

There's silence again and then Kara sighs and her pacing stops. "Hey, don't be too hard on yourself. I know it feels like a lot right now, but you're always going to be more important than that and we're going to get through it, okay? We'll be fine, I've got your back."

Alex and Maggie share a concerned glance before Alex looks over the couch, sees Kara twisting fabric of her shirt in her hand, bouncing her leg.

"… I love you, too. Just take a deep breath… Slower, babe, slower… there you go… I'm here if you need me, okay? Yeah, no I get it, you're all right. I love you... Mhmm, bye."

"She okay?" Alex asks when Kara comes trudging back over. The blonde shrugs, drops her phone onto the coffee table and lets herself fall against Alex's left side again—the one unoccupied by a small and snuggly detective.

"She's stressed out and I can hear it through the phone but I don't know how to help," Kara mumbles and her voice is muffled by Alex's sweater. The older Danvers unpins an arm from beneath her sister and uses it to pull Kara closer, rub her back.

"I think you're doing all right, Little Danvers," Maggie says, leaning over from Alex's other side to make eye contact with Kara. "Let her do what she needs to do and be ready when she comes home."

Alex nods, presses a kiss against Maggie's mussed hair before looking back at Kara. "Maggie's right."

"I know," Kara says, a whine edging her voice as she drops her head against Alex's shoulder. "I just wish there was more I could do right now."

"Hey, it's like when we we're in high school and I'd get all worked up over tests and homework and grades… You knew how to calm me down, and if you could do it then, you can do it now with Lena. This isn't anything new."

Kara hugs her sister a little tighter at the memories that surface of Alex stressing herself to the point of tears and hyperventilation, to blurred eyes reflecting light from computer screens and fingers flailing against keyboards as involuntary sobs heaved forward. Kara remembers shaking hands and hot cheeks and feeling helpless as she waited out the waves of panic with her sister, even when Alex screamed at her, even when late nights turned to early mornings and Eliza was wrapped up away with work and Jerimiah was gone, gone, gone.

Kara snuggles closer and Alex brushes her hair in a show of the silent communication they share.

"If I don't hear from her in two hours or something, I'm going to have to text her though."

Alex and Maggie both laugh.

"I think that's fine," Maggie says.

"Good." Kara huffs just a bit as she says it, eyes her phone just a few feet away. She could text now, make sure Lena is okay, because she sounded shaken on the phone, sounded like she was skirting an edge and teetering. Maybe a text would be good, just to make sure and to—

"Kara, seriously it hasn't even been ten minutes, sit back down."

"What?" _Oh._ She hadn't realized she'd moved to the edge of the couch.

"How about we order some dinner and when we're finished eating, you check up on your girl?" Maggie suggests.

Kara nods and springs off the couch. "I'm feeling potstickers."

Alex rolls her eyes. "You're always feeling potstickers."

Kara shrugs and prepares to wrestle away the phone if she has to.

/

They finish dinner and Kara sends a few texts to Lena, lets herself fall face forward as she flops onto the couch an hour later after pacing though the end of their movie. Her forehead slams into Alex's leg and the brunette pulls back. "Hey, easy there."

"I'm _sorry,"_ Kara whines, looks up so her chin rests just above Alex's knee.

"Nothing from Lena yet?"

"I think we would have heard about it, babe," Maggie says and Kara ignores the comment.

" _Noooo,"_ Kara groans and presses her cheek down before wiggling off the couch. She's up again and heading toward the kitchen when her phone vibrates. She freezes on the spot and Maggie and Alex turn around from the couch, brows raised expectantly.

"So?"

Kara shakes her head and sighs. "I texted Jess to see if she was still there and could check up on Lena, but Jess went home at ten about an hour ago, and she said Lena didn't look good."

"All right, come on," Maggie says, standing up and shrugging on a coat.

Kara raises her gaze from the screen of her phone. "We're going to see her?"

"Yeah, let's go."

Alex smiles at her girlfriend and stands, tugs Kara's ponytail gently. "Get moving, sis, and call Lena one more time, see if she picks up."

"Okay." Kara nods. "Thanks for coming with me."

"Hey we worry about Little Luthor, too," Maggie says as she pulls out her car keys, bumps Kara's shoulder.

"And honestly, Kar, Lena _did_ sound kind of panicky on the phone," Alex says as she puts on her own jacket.

"I know, that's what I was saying!" Kara agrees, relieved that someone feels the same way she does. "And that was hours ago, imagine how she might be feeling now… I just- you know what it's like, don't you?"

"I do. So let's get going, make sure she's okay."

/

Lena's head is pressed against her hand, fingers clasping a fistful of loose waves pulled from the tight bun she'd started with that morning. The other hand clenches around a pen running across pages on her desk, shaking at the tips because she's so tired, so tired, so tired. Her foot bounces beneath her and her eyes burn to the point where she's had to throw on glasses in a futile attempt to stave off the headache that now pounds at her forehead.

A sigh bursts forward, fluttering papers, and she drops her head against the hand holding the pen, keeps the other twisted in hair and tries to stop the large hot tears that brim her eyes and the mountain of pressing, growing weight in her chest—clutching her lungs, propelling her heart faster—that she can't, she can't, she can't.

 _"You are nothing, Lena,"_ Lillian's voice clangs in her skull with the banging and it _hurts_ , it hurts, it hurts.

 _"Another failure here, another there… honestly Lena they're starting to become all you are."_

The door to her office opens and before Lena can register that it's a gentle easing of the handle rather than the dramatic and loud entrance of her mother, Lena flinches, pulling her shoulders in and squeezing her eyes.

"Lena?"

Her frame uncurls, eyes opening and she is so desperate for the sight before her that her lips tilt downward and quiver. A tear drips forward and she pushes it away with the back of the hand holding the pen and it jostles her glasses on her nose, catches a strand of Lena's hair.

Lena's gaze flicks over Maggie and Alex but the only thing she can register is Kara coming closer, Kara's voice soft and smooth saying "It's a lot, I know, I know."

Lena shakes her head, eyes wide and watery, and mouth frowning. "I can't," she gasps out. "I can't do it, I can't."

Before she can choke out more words, Kara's arms are around her and Lena's brain stops speaking in favor of feeling Kara's warmth and gentle touches. "That's fine, it's okay. I know it feels like it right now, but this is not the end of the world, Lena. I know you're stressed, but it'll be all right, it really will—even if you don't finish this work, _even_ if you can't do it."

Lena shakes her head and Kara leans closer, tucks her head toward Lena and whispers into her ear. "But there is no doubt in my mind, Lena Luthor, that you _can_ do this."

The CEO only wraps her arms around Kara, hugs her close and heaves deep breaths into her tight lungs until they loosen, until she can finally pull a coherent thought through her damn head for the first time in hours. And Kara holds her, gives a low whisper of "I know" and Lena just buries her hand a little closer.

"Oh, I know, I know." Kara's breath is warm and her touch is so gentle, so enveloping that Lena takes in one last deep breath before tilting back, running a hand through her hair and catching knots as she blinks up at Kara with soaked lashes and red rimmed eyes.

"How do you feel about going home now?" Kara asks, eases Lena's hand away and smooths her hair for her.

Lena shrugs, because her heart is pounding again at the thought, because her eyes are locked on the piles of paper on her desk, on the crumpled sheets in her trash and the emails mounting and prototypes that now need to be redone and the meeting with investors two days from now and the board meeting the day after that and the messages piled up on her phone and the finances review next week and—

"You drink a disgusting amount of coffee, Lena," Alex says and her voice tears Lena's sight away from the heaps of work and toward the gentle smirk on Alex's face instead, the hand brushing the row of emptied coffee mugs.

Against every quivering, downturned muscle in her face Lena can't help the small smile that flickers upward.

"You're one to talk, Danvers." Maggie grins. "But you really are tense, Little Luthor," Maggie says, coming behind Lena and gently working out knots in Lena's shoulder. "Ridiculous," Maggie murmurs, shaking her head.

Lena let's out a soft laugh, sniffles and rubs her eyes. "I'm not that bad."

"Yeah okay, and I'm not gay." Maggie rolls her eyes and Alex snorts, rubbing her face as Maggie shakes her head, turns back to Lena. "You need yoga."

A proper laugh slips from younger woman at that, face brightening and the room swells wonderfully with the lilt of the sound. "Absolutely not."

Kara gently bumps Maggie from behind Lena, takes over rubbing slow circles up and down the CEO's back.

"That's what Alex said at first, too, and look, she loves it now," Maggie says and comes back around to the front of the desk.

"I do not," Alex interjects. "But, I _do_ love hanging out at Kara's with a movie and some food, and all of my people there." She turns her gaze gently to Lena, rubs a thumb over her knee. "So, what do you say?"

The CEO leans into Kara's touch on her back, so her head nestles against Kara's side. Lena's gaze shifts up to her desk to the work there and the panic returns, simmering low in her stomach.

"Lena, hey this will all be here tomorrow for you to pick right back up where you left off," Kara says quietly, sloping so she wraps Lena in a warm hug from behind. "Come home with us, get some rest, relax a bit and then get back in here tomorrow with a clear head."

Lena's hand curls around Kara's arm, squeezing gently as she takes a deep breath and exhales. "Okay."

"Perfect." Kara smiles and presses a kiss to the top of Lena's head.

"Sorry for umm… for earlier," Lena says, cheeks flushing and gaze moving across the three other women in the room as she stands, begins gathering her things. "I didn't mean to get all panicky like that, I…"

"There's nothing to be sorry for, love," Kara whispers, rubbing Lena's back.

"Nothing at all, so jacket up," Maggie says, tosses Lena's coat her way. "And then we're getting you out of here, Little Luthor."

/

Lena dissolves under the heat of the shower water, washing over her shoulders and dampening her hair until it's soaked.

She lets her head tilt against the tiles, closes her eyes and replaces all her concerns about work with thoughts of the people just a few rooms over. It lets her open her eyes and she manages to pull her head from the wall, begins to work shampoo into her hair. Because she would usually handle these situations alone, dragging herself away from work hours later into a shower with scorching water that mingled with tears. But now, she has people waiting for her. People who make her feel warm and loved. So rather than lingering, she finishes with relative quickness considering the fatigue making her limbs slow and heavy, her blinks long.

When Lena comes out of Kara's bedroom her damp hair drips into the blonde's old sweater and her features still hold tension but the tear tracks streaking her cheeks earlier have disappeared and her lips quirk upward when Alex calls her over from the couch.

"Hey," Alex says as Lena sits beside her, taking up Alex's invite of an open arm. Lena pulls up a leg beneath her, looks over her shoulder to see Kara and Maggie in the kitchen, with steam coming off of a pan on the stove.

"Kara insisted on making you dinner," Alex explains, shaking her head and turning to the kitchen and yelling the next part to Kara, "even though it's past ten and everyone's really tired."

"Shut up, Alex!" Kara calls back, skipping over from the kitchen to press a kiss to Lena's temple. "It'll be ready soon, promise," Kara says, squeezes Lena's shoulder before going back to Maggie.

Alex turnsher attention back to the TV, where reruns are playing from a show Lena doesn't recognize but she snuggles into the couch anyway and takes the blanket Alex handed her.

"Lena?" Alex says quietly after a few minutes pass.

The younger woman turns toward her, fingers fidgeting with the hem of the blanket settled in her lap.

"Does that happen a lot?" she asks, and the softness of her eyes, the tones of hesitancy underlying her voice tells Lena that she's talking about earlier, back in L-Corp.

She spares a shrug. "More than I'd like," she finally admits, hopes that the small half smile she manages might take some weight off her words as she shifts her gaze down, focuses on the blanket in her hands.

But Alex's voice cuts through. "Has it happened since you were little?"

Lena nods and she can't force herself to look up, doesn't want to see disappointment or pity etched on Alex's face.

"Me too."

Lena's eyes snap up, because Alex Danvers is human but she seems as invincible as her bulletproof alien sister, and Alex Danvers is badass and fearless and everything that Lena doesn't see in herself.

"Really?" she manages and hates the lilt of vulnerability quivering in the whisper.

But Alex just nods. "Yeah, there's stress ya know and then there's… there's that."

It's Lena's turn to nod as Alex continues. "It used to happen a lot when I was in school and even though it's less frequent now, it still happens sometimes. Kara probably wouldn't tell you how worked up I used to get because she knows it's not something I really talk about but I just wanted you to know that it happens to me too and it's okay. I know you know you've always got Kara but if you need to talk or just need someone to talk to you, you can call me or Maggie, okay? We care about you, too," Alex says with a shrug.

It's just a few words, but Lena feels every one making her heart a little lighter. "Thank you."

Alex just smiles back and turns to the TV and Lena's finally managed to relax into the couch when Kara appears from the kitchen, says that dinner is ready. So Lena lets Kara pull her up and she eats and thanks Kara and Maggie the whole time. Minutes later her eyes are drooping and she's falling asleep at the table but she doesn't want to leave the people around her so they settle on the couch and she's asleep before a movie is even picked but it doesn't matter because she's pressed against Kara, and Alex and Maggie are just a few feet away, and she knows that this is what love feels like.


End file.
